So we did it. I should say, you did it. We got past the required 250 votes to become eligible for the grants that are offered in the Mission: Small Business promotion. In fact, we got 307 votes! That’s crazy awesome. Thank you so much for your effort, time and commitment. 

Now all the businesses that got to this point wait to see which businesses actually receive the grants.

I know it’s possible you got inundated with requests to vote for businesses. Being asked of by others can be annoying. We at SageRock deeply thank you for your effort. One of the things I learned during this campaign was that we all need each other. No one can survive on their own. We all are given opportunities based on the kindness and charity of others. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

This was a very interesting campaign for many reasons. Not the least of which was how supportive everyone was. But I learned several interesting things during this campaign.

First of all this was a huge success for us from many perspectives.

• It gave us a reason to talk to our current supporters.
• It gave us a reason to talk to new supporters.
• We got to talk with other local businesses in our community. (I ended up voting for every business in Ohio and in all of Milwaukee… probably close to 2000 businesses.)
• We got to easily find other Facebook pages of businesses within our city. (it gave me an idea of creating a directory of Akron businesses Facebook pages)
• And a lot of people supported SageRock.

Here’s a simple report of Likes we’ve received at the SageRock Facebook Page:

We have been getting a really nice amount of Likes on our page recently. But nothing like what we got this past week. 316 new likes on June 29! That’s huge for us.

And look at our engagement numbers (the last point on the graph is June 30):

This contest gave us a reason to be part of a national conversation. And it gave a way for people to interact with us.

I feel very uneasy asking people for things. It’s not in my nature. In fact, it’s probably one reason I’m not a good sales person. But I did ask for your vote here. And I felt like it really was worth it.

I believe people like helping out when they can. This promotion was something that people could do fairly easily.

Here’s one more stat from our Facebook page. Visits to our page:

No matter how I look at it statistically I can only see value in doing this.

But the numbers are actually just the beginning. I learned a lot more about social media and running a business in general during this promotion.

The way the thing was setup was you could only vote for a particular company once. But there was no limit to the total number of companies you could vote for. You literally could have voted for every company in the program.

That was a very cool perspective. Because the scarcity in the program was that you could only be voted for once by your friends and family. You were then required to find other people to vote for you.

Let’s say you could get get a 2% conversion rate of people voting for you. Getting two percent of people to vote for you would have meant you needed to talk to over 12,000 people!

Where are you going to get 12,000 people to talk to? The Mission: Small Business contest, of course!

The people who were most likely to vote for you were people that were in the contest. That’s counter intuitive because they are your “competition.”

But in truth they are your allies. They are in the exact same boat you are in.

This is the greatest point I learned last week: Your competition is your greatest supporter.

This was true in the Mission: Small Business contest. And it is true in our day to day business activities.

The people that understand our plight. The people that understand what we are going through are our competition. They are other business owners.

If there is one group of people that understand how hard it is to keep a business running, not to mention, be successful, it’s other small business owners.

I have a feeling we all could lean on each other a lot more than we do in the small business community.

But that leads me to the second biggest point I learned: The secret to success business (and social media) is being helpful.

The people that were actively involved in the program went through the list of businesses in the program, voted for them and then let that business know they voted for them.

The secret to getting to 250 votes was to be helpful and vote for other people.

I’m positive this is true in all of social media and all of business.

I think we all (myself included) need to take some time and figure out how we can be more helpful to our fellow business owners. It is the secret to our own personal success.

So, those are the things I learned.

Did I thank you for supporting us? If not, THANK YOU SO MUCH! We are nothing, non-existent without you. Thank you again.